Merida, Yucatan — Abortion rights protestors on Saturday defaced the statue that anchors El Parque de La Madre, echoing a tactic that other demonstrators recently used in Mexico City.
More than 150 women gathered for about two hours in the small park starting around 8 p.m. Most held banners and some concealed their faces with the green bandanas that have become a symbol of the abortion rights movement in Latin America.
“Enough of congratulating the girls and adolescents who were forced into motherhood,” said one protestor during the boisterous rally.
Some wielding cans of spray paint cans took out their rage on the Parque Maternidad’s monument.
The vandalism defaces a marble reproduction of a Paris statue by Alfred Lenoir. The work, honoring motherhood, was donated to the city in 1928 by a civic group, the League of Social Action.
No cost estimates for its restoration were available on Sunday.
The protests, which were nationwide and coinciding with International Safe Abortion Day, came after Oaxaca approved a bill to legalize abortion last week, making it only the second region in the country, after Mexico City, to permit the procedure.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador earlier this month introduced a bill to grant an amnesty to women serving jail terms for having abortions. The measure is likely to pass.
Local television also showed footage of protests in Aguascalientes, Jalisco, Oaxaca and Veracruz.
With information from Punto Medio, Diario de Yucatan, Telegraph